Vision
can be many things. It can be a gift, a science, an image or a distant dream.
But
for Jonathan Jacquet, a professional artist, a security supervisor at the
Georgia Museum of Art and a soon-to-be-nurse, vision is an obsession. His
paintings and sculptures cling to a fading age of Romanticism that often
borders on the grotesque. As an artist, he is heavily influenced by a childhood
accident that left him blind in one eye, and on many levels, viewing his works is
like reading an intimate autobiography. He is enthralled by how the brain and
eye function together to read depth and proportion. In fact, most of his works
of art examine the science of neurobiology to explain the physiological
processes that occur while a person is drawing. For some people, this may be a
dense and complicated subject matter, but for Jacquet, it is his life.
He
is a great admirer of scientists like Margaret Livingstone and Nobel Prize
winner Ruth Hubbard for their investigations of how the eye functions. Jacquet
humbly explains that Livingston’s article on Dutch painter and etcher Rembrandt
might explain why he has a natural ability to replicate visual objects from
life onto a two-dimensional plane. “There has been a lot of science and biology
that’s fed into the understanding of vision and how the mind processes vision,”
says Jacquet. “Just how you hold a pencil, that tactile feel, how the touch is
and the amount of brain space dedicated to the hand is miniscule compared to
the amount of brain space dedicated to the retina.”
His stereo blindness, or inability to see
depth, is a visual experience that is often represented as a ring or halo in
his paintings. In a nut shell, his art depicts what an eye sees. If a person
shuts one eye, he or she sees a round, oval shape that defines the perimeter of
his or her vision. This ring, representing Jacquet’s unique field of vision, is
often depicted in sketches with his nose at the bottom left corner and his
eyebrow peeking over the top. Additionally, the anatomy of the retina is built
in concentric rings that he believes students can use as a tool to perceive
angles, horizons and values. Although this takes a bit of awareness on the
artist’s part, the ring in the center of Jacquet’s vision makes reading
proportions a great deal easier. “The amount of brain space dedicated to
perceiving vision is phenomenal,” says Jacquet. “A student that could train
themselves to become more aware of the retina as a tool would greatly aid them
in drawing.”
To
Jacquet, the retina is just as important as the hand, if not more. “Sight is a
wonderful gift that is easily lost,” he says, gazing out the window at a clear
sky. “Just being able to see currently, I greatly appreciate it.”
* * *
Born
on February 13, 1975, Jacquet was only 5-years-old when he stabbed his left
eye. “I was carving a piece of wood with scissors my mom took away,” says
Jacquet sheepishly. “But I kept sneaking the scissors and carving to make a
little knife.” To cut the tape, Jacquet put the end of the roll in his mouth
and started poking it with scissors, when he lost his grip and accidentally
stabbed his eye. “I don’t remember it hurting. I do remember walking into the
living room and being like, ‘Mom, am I going to be blind?’ and she said, ‘Yes,
Jon, I think you probably will be.’”
He
was flown to Minneapolis, Minn., where doctors removed the lens over his left
eye. But less than a year later, he suffered a retinal detachment that required
doctors to wrap a sclera band around his eye. “I actually found out just
recently that they should have removed it at around age 12, so my eye could
have grown some,” he says. “But my eye is the same size as it was when I was
5-years-old because of the restriction by the sclera band. So there’s actually
a rubber band around my eye, but it’s a piece of silicone.” Jacquet is frank
about wanting a fake eye one day. “If I saved enough money, but it’s $3,000.”
Jacquet’s
earliest memory is of his first house in Marion County, Fla. He remembers the
cows in his backyard, two geese, a fig tree and his dog named Blue. His
parents, Leon and Melanie, met at a Bible college and moved the family, which
included Jacquet’s brother Emmanuel and sister Star, across the country. The
family traveled from Florida to North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, back to
Florida and then to Idaho, where they lived on a dairy farm for two years. When
his family moved back to Florida from Wyoming, they lived on his grandfather’s
front porch for six months. Jacquet
slept under a desk. “I think those were some of my favorite memories,” says
Jacquet. “When I think about it, I’m like ‘Wow, we must have been really
poor.’”
While
he was attending elementary school, his father moved the family to Cambridge,
Idaho to find work. Two years later, Jacquet moved back to Florida, living in a
tent for two to three months as the family traveled from Idaho. Along the way,
Jacquet helped his father move water lines in fields and load up trucks with
hay for money. “It was fun. We got to see birds and be outside all the time
doing stuff,” he says. “We were just like migrant labor.”
* * *
A
romantic appreciation of sculpture and wood carving runs through Jacquet’s
bloodline. His grandfather was a Swedish wood carver and cabinet maker, and his
paternal relatives were glassblowers. Jacquet believes this hierarchical
perception of art perpetuates within him, often hampering his professional
goals. Nevertheless, the classically trained artist couldn’t care less about
using an outmoded medium. “It’s what I like to do,” he says simply. “There are
people that do what I want to do better, but I’m where I’m at.”
He
holds an intense affinity with major European artists and sculptors of the 16th
and 17th centuries. Much of this appreciation stems from the depth of vision he
experiences while standing in front of older paintings. Italian artist
Caravaggio and Flemish Renaissance painter and printmaker Pieter Bruegel are
some of Jacquet’s favorite artists. Their technique of layering transparent
paint over opaque colors allows him to see a degree of depth despite his stereo
blindness. His romantic fascination with wood sculptures—a medium he’s
struggled to make time for in the past decade—is inspired by German sculptor
and woodcarver Tilman Riemenschneider. “His work method was primarily
facilitating a team of carvers to make a cohesive work of art and not carving
solely as one individual,” says Jacquet. “It’s beautiful to me because it goes
against the narrative of the isolated artist.”
Jacquet
is a history junkie, naming the English Reformation as one of the most
fundamental turning points in art. It was during this time that his favorite
painters started shifting away from the church toward the bourgeoisie as their
primary supporters. Jacquet mimics the quiet drama of the early Baroque period
by applying the painting techniques of Spanish painters Francisco de Zurbarán and Diego
Velázquez. “I think Jonathan’s work is notably outside the trends in
contemporary art,” says Katya Tepper, a contemporary painter and performance
artist based in Athens, Ga. “They feel reactionary. I define them not by what
they are, but by what they are not, how outside of the zeitgeist they feel.
Although he and I appear to be working on opposite ends of the spectrum with
our paintings, I think we are both mesmerized by paint as a material, and we
are both expected to refer to its intense history when we make art in the age
of technology.”
Jacquet
enjoys modeling sculptures after bog bodies, or preserved human corpses found
in Northern Europe. When he lived in New York during the 1990s, he made several
life-size figures from wood, hand-stitching leather over them with kite string
to create a mummy effect. “Those who are looking for pictures to match their
sofa don’t quite ‘get it,’” says Shawn Vinson, a professional art advisor and
Jacquet’s representative in Atlanta. “Jonathan’s work stopped and made me look
further. I was struck by his unique style and his painting talent was obvious.”
These leather bodies were often suspended from the ceiling or hung from the
wall for balance and dramatic effect. “I think I’m kind of attracted towards
the grotesque because of my eye,” says Jacquet. “The facial deformity that’s
caused by the eye being smaller than the other one is always there.”
In
1997, Jacquet graduated from the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota,
Fla., with a bachelor’s degree in sculpture. He later earned his master’s in
sculpture from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2001. Jacquet was a scenic sculptor for the
Ringling Bros. Circus for two years, carving massive floats from polyurethane
foam. He sculpted a 40-foot-tall mountain for “Hercules on Ice” and cast 40 to
50 skulls for Rasputin’s lair in “Anastasia on Ice.” As the lead scenic
sculptor for Sightline Studios in Stark, Fla., Jacquet helped construct a
30-foot-long dragon that now sits in a theme park called Terra Mítica in Spain. Additionally, he
carved rocks for Universal Studios, sanded the seat backs of river rafting ride
Popeye & Bluto’s Bilge-Rat Barges at Universal’s Islands of Adventure and
carved a Mickey Mouse statue for a rest stop off Interstate 4 in Florida.
* * *
Jacquet
currently works at the Georgia Museum of Art as a security supervisor and at
Athens Regional Medical Center as a patient sitter. He is finishing his last
year of nursing school at Athens Technical College and will graduate next
spring. Balancing his time making art with work and family is a stressful
challenge for the father of two. For the past decade, he has not created many
sculptures—his preferred medium—because of time constraints.
He
adores his two children, Daisy, 8, and Victor, 6, but admits that taking care
of them limits time for his art. On weekdays, he wakes up at 7:15 a.m. to feed his
kids and drop them off at school, so he can get to class by 8:30 a.m. After his
two four-hour-long lectures are over, he picks his children up from school and
tries to devote the rest of his time to them. Every Tuesday, he takes them to
the library so they can check-out books and do homework. “Victor’s starting to
read, and Daisy’s reading chapter books,” says Jacquet. “She’s in this kind of
network for kids and what books they read.” He can name several of her favorite
series off the top of his head: “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” “Judy Moody”
and “Diary of a Wimpy Kid.”
When he arrives home, he cooks dinner (his
entire family is vegetarian), gives his children baths and then reads to them
for an hour before they fall asleep. He has about 90 minutes to himself after
this to read and prepare for the next day.
* * *
After
spending most of his childhood in and out of hospitals, Jacquet knew he wanted
to be either a doctor or an artist. The course curriculum at Athens Tech coincides
with Jacquet’s interest in medicine and, he hopes, will provide him with a
stable income in the future. Despite his
interest in both areas, Jacquet still feels torn between his art and nursing
school. “I hope my pursuit of art doesn’t damage my career as a nurse,” he
says. “I don’t know how corruptive the two will be.”
He
believes that sacrifices in his artwork are necessary to pursue a career in
nursing. “People’s lives are important,” he says. “If they need me to be at a
level of skill that might be impeded by my career in art, then I might have to
sacrifice something.” Despite his confusion, he finds nursing fulfilling. He
both fears and respects the amount of dedication the profession requires. In
clinicals, students are expected to mimic a nurse’s typical work day, often
forcing Jacquet to put art on the back burner. After spending eight hours a
week in class and 36 hours a week prepping and doing paper work, he doesn’t have
much time to paint.
Instead,
he turns to his children for inspiration. Lately, Victor has been drawing more.
He likes to decorate pages, stapling them together to make a book or magazine.
“They believe they’ll be able to draw like I can,” he says. “To help them, I
put pirate patches on them, so they can draw with one eye.” He wants his
children to follow their interests and isn’t too concerned about them learning
how to draw accurately from life. “I have a vision of what I’m trying to work
towards,” he says. “Sometimes it gets clouded, but I have faith that I know
what I want to do. I always know I’ll be making art.”
